Noises in the Night

(Photo by John Carroll–January 28, 2016)

I am staying at a nice family-like hostel on the Haitian/Dominican border. The hostel is very small with just a few rooms surrounding a central area which is decorated nicely with tropical flowers and trees. There is no room service. It has the basics and is very clean. I feel like I am living in the middle of paradise. The owner is great.

Last night started out typical for me. I cleaned and organized my room which measures about 15 square feet. There is an attached little bathroom and shower. There is only one door leading into my room which I always lock. I put my “stuff” on the bed next to me and sat at a tiny desk between the bed and the bathroom wall. I was reading a well-known medical search engine called UpToDate on my i Pad. All was good.

At about 9:15 PM I started hearing some noise but I initially thought it was the usual ambient noise I hear every night. At one point I heard a loud thud that really got my attention. For some reason I thought that I should not go and open my locked front door and look around because I thought, “They are trying to lure me out”. That was my exact thought. But I had no reason to really believe this because I never felt I was in any danger here at the hostel. And the owner and her family always seem to be “circulating”. New guests had just arrived too.

I thought I needed to perish my bad thoughts. My front door area had to be ok.

But I kept hearing creaking noises. I would periodically turn around and glance at my front door knob which was just 10 feet from me. It remained locked and quiet.

The noises continued but I tried to study. At one point I slowly turned and stared at the door knob for several minutes. No noise and no movement of the knob.

I slowly turned around again to study and again told myself not to go to the front door. I just had that gut reaction that one doesn’t usually get unless there is a reason for it.

Then it happened. You know the feeling. I felt someone behind me or I “felt motion” behind me. I swung around in my chair really fast and was staring in the eyes of a man wearing a black stocking cap. He was 3 feet behind me and his right hand was extended forward like he was going after something on my bed right next to where I was sitting.

In less than one second I thought about dying, getting stolen from, and total disbelief because he almost was an apparition—like he beamed down from somewhere. I figured he had picked my front door lock and came in…but the door was closed. So confusion reigned inside my brain.

But my main primeval response was “fight or flight.” My counter-regulatory hormones came pouring out of my adrenals and elsewhere and flooded my brain to act right then.

Again, this all took less than a second.

My back was literally against the wall. There was hardly any room to move. I saw no weapon in his hands so I scooted backwards fast towards him—tipping over the wicker chair as I was standing up. I lunged at him with both arms. But he simply scooted back and took two steps, opened my front door, and disappeared into the darkness.

I quickly looked at my bed and all seemed intact. My passport was there, my doctor stuff was there, a computer was there. Everything seemed untouched. As I stood with the door open protecting my room, I quickly glanced into my little bathroom. I looked above the mirror for my i Phone. It was gone. An hour before I had it plugged it in there to recharge because the outlet at my little desk would not hold the charger plug.

I was mad. The thief got my i Phone AND the charger. And he was gone.

But I figured I still needed to guard my room because I thought that he may have colleagues who would resume the burglary if I walked out to notify the owner of the hostel. I needed to protect my room. And myself.

But I made enough noise that the owner came and I explained to her what happened.She seemed fairly mortified by the events.

While waiting for the police to come, we noticed that the slats of the bathroom window were pried open and the thief was able to slide in through a small opening. He hadn’t picked the front door lock or even come in the front door. Once he was in the bathroom, just on the other side of the wall where I was sitting, he obviously noticed my i Phone charging on top of the mirror and he helped himself to it.

(Photo by John Carroll–January 28, 2016)

But that was not enough for him. When I turned around and saw him, he definitely was going for whatever he could snatch lying on my bed.

However, I have to thank this guy for sparing my life. He was so quiet in my room as he hovered behind me that I would never have known what happened if he quickly slit my throat. Once he was finished with me, he could have grabbed whatever else he wanted and slid himself back out the shower window to the back of the hostel which is dark. No one would have known anything until morning.

So, thief/ladrone/vole, thank you for sparing me. You didn’t have to. But I am angry with you for what you did do.

The police came quickly and filled my little room with big men with big guns. They politely listened to my story and left.

This morning a man who told me his name is Raphael (not his real name) approached me in the hostel and told me that he is the step-son of the owner and asked me if I could recognize the thief. I told him I could for sure.

So we got in his car with tinted glass windows and he drove me to “ the neighborhood of thieves”. He would stop frequently and talk to young men on the sidewalks and ask for directions. As we pulled away, he would ask me, “Was that him?” Sometimes it was close, but never definite. I had to be very careful in not identifying an innocent man because the law here on the Haitian/Dominican border would not spare him. Prisons in the Dominican Republic and Haiti are very bad as their justice systems don’t care much for poor thieves.

Raphael then talked to two “special” friends of his and told them the real story of why we were cruising this neighborhood. They nodded at the window as they listened.

I asked Raphael what he thought my chances were of getting my phone back. He said 90%. He said, “Your phone is in Haiti, but it will come back.”

All in all, I am mad at myself.I am mad that I did not do something about the “noises in the night” before I had to. The thief totally tricked me. When I thought evil possibly lurked outside my locked front door, he was standing just one foot away from me behind a wall in my bathroom. But I feel very fortunate too because the thief only got “one piece of my stuff” and he could have taken me out if he really wanted to.

As opposed to me who lost a phone, thousands of people living in camps on the Haitian/Dominican border have lost their chances for education, jobs, clean water, good nutrition, and dignity. They have lost much more. They have had their lives stolen.